Carl W. Kenney II is an award winning columnist and novelist. He is committed to engaging readers into a meaningful discussion related to matters that impact faith and society. He grapples with pondering the impact faith has on public space while seeking to understand how public space both hinders and enhances the walk of faith.

Friday, April 8, 2016

The crime bill in historical context

The year, 1995

Hundreds of people marched to the Few Gardens housing
complex. The sadness in the crowd felt like we had discovered more than we
could bare.

Shaquana Atwater was accidently shot and killed. The bullet
was meant for someone else. It was a drive-by shooting and the person who
pulled the trigger failed to see the baby playing on the porch.

Pictures of the
two-year-old in the newspaper and on television made it hard to fight back the
tears. We walked to the place where it happened.

The week prior to the march, members of the community packed
the room where the Board of Durham County Commissioners meet to demanded more police
presence. They wanted to build a collaborative effort to end the cycle of death
in their community.

This is the context of the crime bill.The push for its approval came from people
living in communities like Durham’s North East Central
Durham. At the time, I served as pastor of the Orange Grove Missionary Baptist
Church and helped facilitate the North East Central Durham Partners Against
Crime Project.

It helps placing opinions within a historical context. For me
it’s the same as reading the Bible. I can go with a literal interpretation, or I
can consider the culture and context to gain a better understanding regarding
the intent of those behind the construction of the original document.

This is the disconnect created when people evaluate the
crime bill. Retrospect helps us understand how and why it shouldn’t have been
signed into law.What people miss is the
massive pressure placed on lawmakers during the rise of crack cocaine.

"You are defending the people who killed the lives you
say matter," Bill Clinton told Black Lives Matter protestors at a rally where
he was campaigning for his wife.

Protestors shouted "black youth are not super
predators," taking issue with a phrase Hillary Clinton used in a 1996
speech about violent crime committed by young people.

Hilary Clinton’s 1996 speech reflected the pain of
many back then. It reflected how those living in and working in those
communities felt. It’s the language many used to express their rage after the
death of innocent bystanders. It’s how we talked that day when we marched to
Few Gardens to draw attention to the need for more police protection.

It’s what I said when I spoke that day. I talked about
outsiders coming into the community and creating what felt like a war
zone.I talked about people being afraid
to walk in their own neighborhoods because of drugs and violent crime.

Mistakes were made back then.

Members of the community pressured the police to take a more
aggressive approach to law enforcement.They demanded random stop points and increased presence.Residents of the predominately black North
East Central Durham community wanted to arrest and punish the men and women they
saw as predators. They used that language to describe their experience back
then.

This was the language used to describe youth who embraced
gang culture in Durham. The documentary “Welcome to Durham” exposed how gangs
were a growing fear. In Durham, people like Otis Lyons, founder of Campaign 4
Change, use their personal stories to help youth avoid gang activity.

“I do it basically, to save lives. You know I was a gang
banga too,” Lyons, who goes by the name Vegas Don, told Christopher “Play”
Martin of Brand Newz. “You know I sold
drugs, so I know that ain’t the route to go, so I’m just trying to save as many
lives as I can.”

Youth crime and gangs play a large role in how we process conversations regarding mass incarceration. It's a reality that can't be dismissed.

There were 35 murders in Durham, NC in 1994. A 2004 study
from the Governor's Crime Commission documented more than 8,500 gang members
and 387 gangs in North Carolina.

Lawmakers, under pressure from citizens, sought ways to
strengthen anti-gang legislation. A bill calling for stiffer penalties enforced
under the crime bill did little to curtail increases in youth crime.

"When your social fabric is one where the community
doesn't believe in the school system, doesn't believe in county government,
doesn't believe in the things that are important, it opens up the door for
persons to look at something else to believe in," said Donnie Phillips, a
retired juvenile justice officer in Durham, during a community forum at the
Hayti Heritage Center in 2008.

One death followed by another.One funeral, with people crying because death
came too soon, followed by another. The stabbing of Kenan Odom, 22, came just
six weeks after his cousin Kordero Odum, 19, was shot dead, amplifying the
grief of that family.

Odum had been out on bail on a number of charges, including
murder charges for his involvement in two separate shooting deaths in 2005.
Xavier Moore, 22 was suspected of killing Odum. He was shot outside a Miami
Boulevard Wendy’s restaurant in 2005.

Odum was arrested for being one of the four men present when
18 year-old Sesaley Hunter was shot in the head. In April of that same year, he
was charged again with being one of the four present when 17 year-old Kashaun
Patterson was shot to death.

I still remember the death of Skye Lee, an 18-year old student
at Northern High School, killed while her 10-month old child was nearby. Cory
Anthony Jiggets, 19, was charged in connection with the slaying. Jiggets is the
father of Skye’s child.

Over the years, I’ve attended close to 100 funerals of young
people killed. I waited and prayed with the family after Tia Carraway left for
a lunch break and never returned. She was found two days later in a wooded area
with a bullet in the back of her head.

What do you call young people who commit murders? What do
you say to families after they receive the bad news?

Is Bill Clinton right? Are we defending the people who take
the lives of other people when we focus too much on the language of rage
outside the context of those old statements? I seriously doubt that he possess the moral compass to help us filter through this issues.More critical than Bill and Hilary's involvement in passing the crime Bill is the black communities participation in moving the Bill forward. Understanding the context in which the bill was passed aides in understanding the manipulation that assured the bills success. Rather than point fingers at the Clinton administration, it becomes more productive to ask what it takes to prevent bills like this being passed again.This is the meaning of black empowerment.

I stood before the masses and prayed at Few Gardens. I can’t
remember the prayer. I do remember the emotions. There was a bunch of God fix
it entangled with please show us the way. We didn’t know what to do other than
to collaborate with a community under siege.

In 1994, we began to feel the burden related to the rise of crack cocaine in black communities. We watched as boys transformed into criminals and took weapons to protect their territory. Mistakes were made back then. Now we can learn from those mistakes

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Carl W. Kenney II

Carl was named the best serious columnist of 2011 by the North Carolina Press Association for his work with the News & Observer's community paper The Durham News and in 2016 by the Missouri Press Association for his columns in the Columbia Missourian. He is a columnist with the News & Observer and Co-Executive Producer of "God of the Oppressed" an upcoming documentary film on black liberation theology. He is a former Adjunct Professor at the University of Missouri - School of Journalism and Adjunct Instructor at Duke University, the Center for Documentary Studies. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He furthered his education at Duke University and attained a Master of Divinity. He was named a Fellow in Pastoral Leadership Development at the Princeton Theological Seminary on May 14, 2005. He is a freelance writer with his commentary appearing in The Washington Post, Religious News Services,The Independent Weekly and The Durham Herald-Sun. Carl is the author of two novels: “Preacha’ Man” and the sequel “Backslide”.
He has led congregations in Missouri and North Carolina